Among the 28 regiments raised in New York as a result of President Abraham Lincoln’s call for 300,000 volunteers on July 1, 1862, was Colonel Joseph Welling’s 138th New York Volunteer Infantry, a regiment that was re-designated the 9th New York Heavy Artillery on December 9, 1862. Among those who answered Lincoln’s appeal and joined Welling’s regiment was Lewis Foster.
Foster stated his age as 18 at the time of his enlistment in Company C on September 1, 1862, but in actuality he had turned 16 just four days before. Promoted to corporal on November 14, 1864, the resident of Wayne County, N.Y., served for the war’s duration with the 9th New York.
On September 12, 1862, following a brief period of training, Foster and his comrades departed for Washington, D.C. Five days later they arrived in the nation’s capital. From that moment until May 18, 1864, the regiment served in Washington’s defenses. After that, however, they were one of the “Heavy” regiments pulled into the gory whirlpool of the 1864 Overland Campaign. The 9th never returned to its comfortable D.C. barracks, and spent the rest of its enlistment enduring rugged marches and bloody fights.
In the spring of 2020, Alexander MacLeod, a descendant of a veteran of the regiment, donated 22 letters written by Lewis Foster, along with approximately 40 other missives penned by 10 other members of the unit and scores of other documents related to the 9th NYHA’s service, to the care of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute. All of these letters appear in “A Good Cause”: Letters from the Ninth New York Heavy Artillery. The letters excerpted here from Foster and an unidentified member of the regiment, offer insight into the regiment’s tenure in the capital’s defenses, service with Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1864, and in the conflict’s final months.
FORT GAINES
May 28, 1863
Dear Mother,
